User interaction and navigation is generally different on modern day portable electronic devices with touch-sensitive displays than it is on computers with user interfaces comprising mouse and keyboard. The birth of smartphones and tablets with touch-sensitive displays also paved the way for rethinking the way an operating system is designed. All major label present day smartphones and tablets rely on program or application icons and widgets that may be brought about and rearranged by contact between the touch-sensitive screen and, e.g., the finger of a user.
To launch an application, the user generally tabs the icon corresponding to a particular application. As more applications are installed, the number of icons representing applications may exceed the number of icons that fit into the touch-sensitive display of the portable electronic device at one time. To enable navigation of more applications, many portable electronic devices allow the user to navigate among several pages of icons by swiping across the touch-sensitive display. In this way, to launch an application on a different page than the one currently presented to the user, the user first swipes the touch-sensitive display to reach the page containing the relevant icon and then tabs the icon, thereby launching the application represented by the icon.
As an alternative or additionally to arranging icons on several pages, icons and their associated applications may be arranged in categories or groups. These categories or groups may be represented by category icons. To launch an application associated with a particular category, the user may initially have to reach the page containing the category icon, tab the category icon, and finally tab the icon representing the desired application. As the number of applications installed on portable electronic devices grows, the increase in number of categories and pages available to the user complicates the process of launching a particular application. Moreover, it takes time to navigate the pages and categories and it may be hard to remember on which page and in which category an application is launched from. While search options are available on some portable electronic devices, they require writing at least part of the name of the desired application, which may also be a time consuming process.
WO 2007/076210 A1 discloses a device with a touch-sensitive display which may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display. The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device. The device displays one or more unlock images with respect to which the predefined gesture is to be performed in order to unlock the device. The performance of the predefined gesture with respect to the unlock image may include moving the unlock image to a predefined location and/or moving the unlock image along a predefined path.